Hip-hop: the real Bronx tale

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The early days of hip-hop were a mystery until the urban archaeologist Johan Kugelberg began to dig

WHEN Johan Kugelberg’s godson started bingeing on early hip-hop in the midNineties, the erstwhile garage rock collector was intrigued. The records were primitive disco rap from the last gasp of the Seventies, as raw and homemade as the punk that was taking on allcomers in Britain at that time. Kugelberg was minded to check out a book or two, maybe a couple of compilations to fuel his interest. He checked. There was nothing.

“I couldn’t figure out where these records came from. There was so little available on the early days of what has become a pop culture behemoth. No